Some ideas about digging

NBC didn’t take the Hillary Clinton UFO bait during Sunday night’s primary debate, staged just a couple of weeks after the former Secretary of State vowed to “get to the bottom of” The Great Taboo. As per tradition, the mainstream media tossed a lot of confetti in the air over her UFO remarks before getting bored and wandering off. But in doing so, they forget – assuming they ever knew – about the formidable and unremitting curiosity of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta.

In 2002, the former Clinton White House chief of staff joined the ad hoc Coalition for Freedom of Information in a federal lawsuit against NASA for access to files related to the so-called Kecksburg incident of 1965. Although that initiative, spearheaded by independent investigative journalist Leslie Kean, produced no smoking gun, the effort shook loose hundreds of previously unreleased documents, revealed that many others had been destroyed or went missing, and forced the space agency to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees.

It’s going to be a long and tedious slog, but any hopes of reaching the ground floor of Uncle Sam’s relationship with UFOs will require punching through layers of bureaucratic sediment/CREDIT: bovilla.com

We may never know what, if anything, Podesta attempted to accomplish on the UFO front during his time as senior adviser in the Obama White House. But he has a roadmap for how to attack the archives on multiple fronts. Or rather, he has access to a strategy promoted by a network of scholars, historians and researchers known as the Sign Historical Group (SHG).

In 2002, with decades invested in clawing through the brambles of federal acronyms stretching back to World War II, SHG says it sent a detailed proposal to Podesta about what to look for, and where. It updated that pitch online in 2014. For member Jan Aldrich, director of the even more specialized Project 1947, the logical – and perhaps only – way to understand the controversy is to toggle the FOIA time machine back to when the U.S. military actually left a paper trail in its efforts to comprehend the incomprehensible. Nearly 70 years later, he argues, the gatekeepers still aren’t on top of this mess.

“The government may have better data,” says Aldrich in an email to De Void, “but they are still puzzled.” Want answers? Then forget about drilling into the gold mine using more recent cases. “If there is more definitive information in the government’s possession,” he adds, “then I would think it would be [at] some high level government scientific lab or … in the compartmentalized stove pipes of special surveillance programs.”

The way SHG sees it, the “Holy Grail of Ufology” is 68 years old. It’s a report whose title is so banal – “Estimate of the Situation,” or EOTS — it sounds like it was written to be invisible. EOTS was the product of the USAF’s first official inquiry into the “flying disc” phenomenon. The brass called it Project Sign, the namesake of SHG. In 1948, Sign analysts from Wright-Patterson AFB’s Technical Intelligence Division sized up the problem and prepared a draft, or estimate, venturing that UFOs likely had “interplanetary” origins. USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg rejected their best guess and demanded another.

In a November ’48 come-to-Jesus showdown that would probably make a great David Mamet drama, members of the Sign team were assembled in Washington, D.C., and told what to write. Dissenters were reassigned.

“The Estimate died a quick death,” wrote USAF Capt. Edward Ruppelt, who directed the more widely known successor, Project Blue Book, in 1956. “Some months later it was completely declassified and relegated to the incinerator. A few copies, one of which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFOs.” Remaining copies of EOTS have not been located.

But EOTS is just a small piece of the puzzle. SHG’s strategy, broken into categories and subcategories, runs 43 pages and offers numerous leads, most based on existing documents. If a picture paints a thousand words, the payoffs from references from one source alone — a document called “History of Air Technical Intelligence Center 1 July 1952-31 December 1952” — could be incalculable. According to that summary, ATIC’s mission was “to investigate and analyse [cq] reports of unidentified aerial objects or of phenomena of possible concern to the air defense of the US” and to “produce air technical and scientific intelligence studies and estimates of alien capabilities to conduct aerial warfare.”

To that end, states a “Technical Requirements Division” paper, “the installation of gun cameras in F-86’s assigned to the Fighter Squadron at Wright-Patterson Air Base was assured. The purpose of these installations is to provide suitable photographs during flights resulting from reports or sightings of unidentified flying objects.” Furthermore, “15 officer Air Attaches, 10 airmen, 27 ATLO’s [assembly test and launch operations personnel] and 37 investigators” received specialized training. They fanned out into three states “to investigate flying object reports. To date, 100 videon stereoscopic cameras, equipped with diffraction gratings over one lens, have been procured and received at ATIC.”

So what happened to the pix?

And SHG isn’t just poking around for military records – what is the CIA hanging onto? SHG takes aim at an “unremittingly pedestrian” narrative published in 1997 by Agency historian Gerald K. Haines. His CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 paper issued the absurd and unsubstantiated claim that more than half of all UFO reports in the late 1950s and 1960s could be explained by high-altitude spy planes.

“Following a lawsuit,” writes SHG, “the CIA released about 900 pages of UFO documents. However, this and later releases by the CIA does not represent the total material on the subject, which has been estimated to be at least 16,000 pages. Furthermore, there are documents held by the Navy, Air Force, FBI, Army and others, which give important insight into the CIA’s activities here. Most of these documents were apparently unknown to Haines, and some are little known to many in the UFO field. Also, Haines apparently is unaware of the huge amount of data in multiple copies, which went to the CIA from other agencies, further indicating the whole story has not been made available to the public.”

AFCRL, AMC, SAC, MERINT, CIRVIS, MATS — the Sign Historical Group’s list of data suspects goes on and on. So John Podesta’s call for accountability isn’t just some vague quirky “X-Files” exhortation. It’s a demand for closing the gaps in official history. After all, we did pay for it, so we do own it. Check out SHG’s ideas for getting this stuff back, at http://www.project1947.com/shg/cfi/sfcfiproposal.htm. De Void came away from it with just one question: Why do we still allow the dead WWII crowd who made the original classification decisions to keep telling us what we can and can’t handle?

11 comments on “Some ideas about digging”

@albert,
I should’ve written: based upon all available historical data, I think it was a Russian capsule…etc.
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Yes, when it comes to spiritual evolution, Earth humanity is still on the “naughty list.”

+1, Bill P.
I wish I had read your post before I posted mine.
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Yes, fear is the prime motivating factor, and it always has been. Fear of terrorism is primary among folks without knowledge (ignorant, not stupid), though it’s low on the list possibilities, which the Ruling Class never discusses. Financial worries plague most families in the world today. Even after the Elite created hedge funds, interest-free loans, and credit default swaps, they worry, not about money, but about their whole financial oligarchy crashing down.
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Fear makes people worship a God*, follow a dictator, follow a cult leader, support a government, and they don’t even realize it.
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If one is inclined to believe in a version of the Ancient Astronaut Theory (as I am), then all mythology and religion is easily explainable. It also accounts for human nature and our inclinations, good and bad. Knowing that the gods were -just like us- doesn’t release us from our personal obligations, but it does relieve us of the burden of explaining irrational belief systems.
…………
*
He sees when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake,
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!
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What did Coots and Gillespie know back in 1934?

@freeman69,
IIRC, RE: Kecksburg. First a UFO, then a meteor, then a Russian satellite, then a meteor, then a different Russian satellite.
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What are folks to think about Kecksburg?
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Surely 50 year old satellite technology no longer need be classified, and meteors are commonplace. My guess is they’re stuck with the satellite explanation. Likely most of the personnel involved in the collection effort believe the Russian satellite story, so no worries there. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to keep any records hidden any longer, so why not release them? Well, why establish a precedent that may come back and bite you later?
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People no longer accept the ‘truth by proclamation’ attitude of the gov/mil folks. They’ve been burned too many times. Clearly, the gov/mil folks don’t give a RSA about whether or not we believe them, hence the almost childlike glee they must enjoy when they make their absurd press releases.
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Apparently, Kecksburg needs to be kept secret for some other reason. If you’ve heard Charlie Rose interview dozens of Generals over the years, you’ll know that there’s no lack of intelligence* among US military brass, and their tech guys and gals are sharp as well.
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So it must be that Kecksburg must be either unexplainable, or a known, but terrifying, thing that must be hidden by any means.
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Maybe it was Die Glocke, from 1945. It musta been a bitch, crashing in Pennsylvania in ’65, and not being able to get back. Maybe their was an old Nazi, hidden at Wright-Pat for years. Maybe he had J’rod for company.
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* ‘lack of intelligence’ is reserved for the State Dept. and Presidential advisors. It says that right in their employment contracts.

…Readers might wonder: if what you wrote might be true, why didn’t the ‘Interplanetary Envoys,’ as you called them, simple land en masse and compel Earth humanity to realize their existence and respond to their advice?
…Answer: because it would be a huge infringement of human Free Will. Unlike most inhabitants of Earth ( a rather backward planet in the scheme of the solar system) inhabitants of more evolved planets understand that Free Will is one of the Spiritual Laws governing our existence. Without Free Will, the evolution of consciousness would not proceed. Without Free Will, no lessons would be learned due to our choices – for good or ill – and thus we’d be no better than automatons.
…It might be the silliest answer one could possibly imagine to the burning question: why haven’t They landed in an undeniable way, yet?
..Because…They haven’t been officially invited!”

@Billy,
“…Why do we still allow the dead WWII crowd who made the original classification decisions to keep telling us what we can and can’t handle.”
…Indeed, that question is the Rosetta Stone, the mystifying untranslated codex, of the entire UFO/ET enigma.
Put in other words: Why is the Great Taboo…still Great? And still Taboo?
Distilling all the sociological and psychological analyses foisted upon us by the propagandists and those who strive to counter the propaganda, one incontestable dynamic is left: FEAR.
FEAR and insecurity are, to our spiritual detriment, the greatest motivators of activity among most of humanity today.
…It is fear of the unknown, fear of future possibilities, and (most relevant to the political-economic-military-establishment) fear of change that motivates the maintenance of this silly veil of secrecy.
…Something about the phenomenon studied in the 40’s & 50’s…something about those early ‘close encounters’ scared the bejesus out of the powers-that-were.
I shall continue to maintain that it was direct face-to-face contact between Interplanetary Envoys and leaders of various world powers that led to this Grand Deception. The Visitors offered to teach humanity a new ‘way of living’, a new approach to life, beyond the ceaseless meaningless, competitive, exploitative, divisive, greedy, destructive, modes of living our society has evolved.
…That is unacceptable to those ( the world oligarchs) who are accustomed to privilege and power.
Selfishness and the glamour of power & control are the root cause of the cover-up.
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You may say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one.
Human selfishness is the root of all evil.

It’s all about maintaining the appearance of always being in control. Whereas the UFO/ET phenomenon clearly demonstrates a complete lack of control. So they use denial and disinformation to cover up that reality.
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The Kecksburg case is important, if not just because the inhabitants are on record stating there was a significant military presence. This was 1965, so it seems that secrets can be kept.
The military could say more about events around Stephenville in Jan 2008; the FAA radar data highlights this fact.
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I possess a limited collection of UFO-related books, including Keyhoe’s: Flying Saucers Top Secret, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy and Aliens from Space, which document significant events – a compact history from a personal point of view. I’m also reading UFOs: A Scientific Debate (1975 edition), that contains important contributions from Hynek and McDonald. All together, they paint a clear picture of the pre-70’s UFO issue, and how it was handled (or mishandled).
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There are people out there (as well as documents) who could help clarify what did happen during the post WWII decades.